ANOUEL	Researcher for humanitarian solutions

Languages in the world Geographical distribution of languages One could be amazed at the diversity of the spoken languages in the world. How many are they all around the world? On which continents are they the most spread? On which one are there less different languages? Access to repartition table (in french) The most spoken languages What are the most spoken languages? In which countries? Where does the English language rank? To answer these questions, see two different tables of the most spoken languages. Note that numbers are not the same from on table to the other. Access to the 80 languages table (in french) Access to the 22 languages table (in french) Languages on Internet What are the most common languages used on Internet? Is there a link between the number of Internet users and the number of speakers in each language? Where does the English language stand? To answer to these questions, see an interesting table and note the effect of the penetration level. Access to the table of Internet Users by Language New languages Statistics shown above do not take into consideration a group of brand new languages created over the last century or just about. They are called constructed languages. They have very often been invented by one single man. Let’s have a look at a list of more than 500 of them. Access to the list of constructed languages Many of the constructed languages are spoken by a small group of persons if not only by the inventor himself. Only a few of them are spoken by larger groups of persons. The most common of these languages, according to an estimate by UNESCO, is Esperanto, spoken by 2, 000,000 people around the world. Writing systems Because they could not communicate between themselves, past civilizations who lived on earth invented different words to express the same thing. Just take for example when listening to people speaking in a foreign language. One can easily notice that these different words are made of well known and well recognizable sounds like a, i, o as well as m, s, t. So one can easily think that he can read or write the words he hears even though he does not understand their meaning. It isn’t so. Not only did they invent different words but people from past civilizations also invented different writing systems. As a result, there is no way out. It’s like a Babel tower.. How important are the writing systems and where are they used? For a visual representation, have a look on a map from Wikipedia. Access to map of distribution of writing systems in the world On the site Omniglot you can have some informations about the various writing systems used in the common languages and you may read a text written in the different writing systems, that is alphabetical, syllabic or logographical. The text that was chosen is very relevant : it is an excerp from the Bible, the Book of Genesis, and it is entitled "The Tower of Babel". Access to definition of writing systems Access to texts on the Tower of Babel Standardized identification of languages Since there are so many languages and so many ways of naming them, a standardization of their identification has become necessary. Standards ISO 639-1 and 639-2 have been created and two or three letters codes called alpha-2 and alpha-3 have been given to them. Those standards are kept at the Library of Congress and a list of all languages names and codes is available Access to the list of languages with their ISO 639-2 and ISO 639-1 codes Comments 7000 languages are spoken around the word and that figure includes the constructed languages. That is huge. Of course, the larger the population the wider the use of a language and vice versa. You probably noticed that the languages used on the Internet don’t match the spoken languages, English topping Chinese. As a researcher looking for a worldwide involvment, I would like to be able to be understood by everyone on earth without having my ideas translated. Sounds like utopian. How can a web site be translated into 7000 languages. If I choose a language without using the translation, I will penalize whomever is not fluent in that specific language. It is a kind of discrimination. What can I do then? A universal language Language is the way of communication between people. With 7000 languages, all of them different, that same communication becomes almost impossible. Imagine if a newborn child could choose his langugage, he would probably pick up the one that is the most widely used. The same situation occurs when an adult wishes to learn a second language. No matter how many languages one speaks, he won’t be able to communicate with everyone he would like to. And the more languages one speaks, the less fluent he is and the lower the quality of the communication becomes. An interesting solution has been considerered to that situation. Instead of learning many second languages, why not learn one single language that would be shared by everone as a second language. So, no matter what the mother language of two people is, they can communicate using that common second language. And that second language can be used also whenever speaking in front of a group of persons of different languages. Many constructed languages have been created to that matter and are proposed as an international auxiliary language. They are not substitutes to national languages but only an help whenever in need of an interlinguistic communication. Esperanto is one of them. See an example of a known text in Esperanto. Access to the text on the Tower of Babel in Esperanto But Esperanto is not the only language with a tendancy to become the universal language. In order to do so, a language has to have different qualities that we will list as soon as possible on another page on this particular web site. Reading suggestion Could a universal language contribute to the dawning of a new humanity?

© Anouel 1999-10-18 - 2006-08-20 All rights reserved